Meet our new Scottish Thistle Awards sponsor

Why are the Scottish Thistles Awards so important to Scotland’s tourism and events industry?

These awards are a fantastic demonstration of excellence in our industry, helping to improve overall quality and standards.

The winners are exemplars in what they do and we know, in our business, how competitive the international environment is and how important it is to continue to drive quality and standards in Scotland, the Thistle Awards support this endeavour.

Abbey: The Destination Experts has been supportive of VisitScotland’s ambitions to be one of the most environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable destinations in the world. How will you continue this support through your sponsorship?

The Abbey Group has made a substantial commitment to our own ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) and over the past year we have made significant strides within our own organisation. One of the ways we would see Abbey supporting VisitScotland’s ambition would be around our own influence with our supplier partnerships.  Demonstrating the exemplars and equally looking at some of our suppliers who haven't thought about it yet and encouraging them to start. As a market leader we believe that we should be leading the way and supporting and encouraging others to do the same.

We’d be very keen to work with VisitScotland on those initiatives to understand within our own business what some of these exemplars are doing so we, in turn, can encourage other members of our supply chain to adopt similar initiatives.

How can Abbey: The Destination Experts and VisitScotland help make responsible tourism and sustainability seem more achievable through the Scottish Thistle Awards?

I think it's about sharing best practice, perhaps removing some of the myth and mystique around where people feel it's an overwhelming task. There is a journey that can be started that isn't overly complicated or overly onerous even if you're a small business.